ASMP DC Presents
THE ART AND COMMERCE OF EDITORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Brian Smith, President of Editorial Photographers
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Despite rumors to the contrary, the death of magazine photography has been greatly exaggerated. Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Brian Smith, President of Editorial Photographers, will discuss how to maximize the creative and commercial rewards while avoiding bad contracts, stagnant rates and rights-gobbling appetites of multinational media corporations. He remains a firm believer that editorial photography can remain financially viable provided photographers retain unencumbered re-licensing and reprint rights to their photos, Smith will reveal what it takes to make a living in editorial and what it takes to get and keep the attention of photo editors and art directors at top magazines and how production value can make your work stand out, citing examples of production involved in small, medium and large editorial shoots.
He will discuss the need to charge properly for the time and expense of digital capture and processing and why photographers and agencies may be to blame for unreasonably low caps that some magazines that some magazines have placed on digital fees. Photographers, when united, have been able to affect positive change to the industry for fair contracts paying higher fees and space usage and how photographers unwilling to turn down bad deals can send it all tumbling down.
Smith’s first magazine photograph appeared in Life Magazine when he was a 20 year-old student at the University of Missouri. Five years later he won the Pulitzer for photographs of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Based in Miami Beach, his work has won awards in World Press Photo, American Photo, Pictures of the Year and Communication Arts Competitions and appears regularly in ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Time, Forbes, Business Week and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. His corporate clients include the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Kraft, Nabisco, TNT and NBC. His work can be seen at: briansmith.com
